Daily News

Outstanding Growth for Billeo

Billeo, Inc., a provider of online shopping and bill pay services, ranked 2483 on the recently released annual Inc. 500/5000, a ranking of the nation’s fastest growing private companies, the second straight appearance for the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company, which has had three-year sales growth of 98 percent.

Founded in 2006, Billeo’s network now includes more than 40 banks, 20,000 billers, 1,500 merchants, six of the top 10 card issuers and two of the top five airlines.

Murali Subbarao, Billeo CEO, credited the company’s performance to its ability to make things easier to pay for things online with a credit card. “We enable people to save time and money. Most people are not taking advantage of traditional rewards. We have assembled very attractive offers from merchants that help consumers leverage loyalty programs and use them at the right time.”

The company’s shopping assistant, a browser plug-in enables customers not only to select goods to purchase, but also gives them the option to buy them from merchants who offer “bonus” rewards on top of the normal rewards the consumer might use for making the same purchase at another merchant.

The participating merchants are automatically flagged by the plug in. “There are no e-mails, no pop-ups, we just gently remind you,” Subbarao says.

On the bill payment side, Billeo enables customers to pay online bills with credit cards rather than with electronic checks, an option preferred by some consumers.

Subbarao expects to see strong further gains in 2012 as from its ZipThru Pay and ZipThru Buy services, which were launched in June. The services enable the company’s business customers to simplify and speed up online shopping and bill pay payment with technology that completes payment and purchase transactions without needing to go to separate Web sites.

The new services enable businesses to drive purchases, and enable card-based bill payments, directly from a Web site, mobile or tablet app, without having to build direct connections to each biller or merchant. Billers and merchants have long sought ways to aggregate bills or products on their sites so customers don’t go to competitors.

The ZipThru services connect Billeo’s business customers with billers and merchants that accept debit, credit or prepaid card payments online. ZipThru navigates thru the payment or checkout process, auto-fills the payment details, and captures the payment confirmation - simplifying the payment and purchase processes to one or two clicks. The technology automatically completes and saves passwords, payment and shipping information.

ZipThru Pay enables financial institutions and card issuers to install a Pay Now button into an online bill payment platform, allowing consumers to instantly pay a bill with their credit, debit or prepaid card, rather than using an electronic check, which typically takes three to five business days to deliver.

Even with strong expected sales growth again this year, it will be difficult to make the list again, Subbaro concedes, because every year the company is getting larger, making the large percentage gains that much more difficult to achieve simply from a statistical standpoint.